


Early

by Seefin



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Malfoy Manor, POV Draco Malfoy, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, read this if you have a spare three mins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 11:23:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13433703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seefin/pseuds/Seefin
Summary: Draco dreamt about the Great Hall, empty, and woke up sweating in his empty house. His parents gone, the house-elves gone, the furniture gone, the books in the library taken from the shelves, and the shelves gone.





	Early

Draco dreamt sometimes about the floor of the Slytherin common room thick with snakes. About the body in a stairwell he’d tripped over during the Battle, about the greenhouses, blackened glass, rotting, the smell of dead vines. **  
**

He dreamt about the Great Hall, empty, and woke up sweating in his empty house. His parents gone, the house-elves gone, the furniture gone, the books in the library taken from the shelves, and the shelves gone.

Draco could cook the three meals his mother had taught him one summer when he’d been young, and not much else. Eggs Benedict with muffins you had to bake in the oven, roast veal with mushrooms and white wine, and butter-poached lobster. They all took a long time to make, but he didn’t mind so much. He didn’t have a lot else to do.

He went for walks during the day sometimes, around the boundary of the grounds so that he could check that the wards were still intact. There was a herd of deer in the forest beyond the lake and he’d walk until he found them. He tried not to disturb them, but sometimes they’d run.

He washed the sheets on his bed every Sunday along with most of his clothes, and hung them up in the ballroom in front of the fire to dry. When it was a good day he would lay them out on the lawn in the heat, and at night when he slept they’d smell like sunlit grass.

Harry came over a lot, whenever he was free. He’d always knock on the front door and wait politely on the top step, facing the drive and the fountain that didn’t work anymore, no matter how many times Draco would tell him to come straight inside.

This morning there was snow caught in Harry’s dark hair, and he was shivering when Draco opened the door. It had taken him almost five minutes to come down from the attic, where last night he had found a few stacks of books the Aurors had managed to overlook. He’d fallen asleep up there by accident, and been woken when the bell rang in the corner of the room, covered in a fine layer of dust.

Harry brushed Draco’s shoulders off, halfway to smiling, and looked at Draco’s bare chest, his underwear, his socks. “Where were you?” he asked. “The cellars?”

Draco frowned. He hadn’t thought to check down there yet, for things left behind. The wine was probably all gone, but there might still be some furniture that he could transfigure into a proper bed. Currently he was sleeping on two mattresses, stacked up on the floor of one of the guest rooms. He didn’t like to see his old room bare, the faded patches on the walls where his posters had hung for almost ten years.

“The attic,” Draco replied, reaching his hand into Harry’s hair. He made a fist, and Harry grinned.

“Do you want to go out?” he asked, and Draco shook his head. He never wanted to go out when Harry was already here.

“I’m short on money this month,” Draco told him, and let his hair go. “Do you want to check the cellars for wine?”

About half the racks were still filled with bottles, and nothing at all had been taken from the boxes in the back room. Draco cracked one open and leant the wooden lid against the rough stone wall. Harry peered over his shoulder, still shivering, even though he was the one with clothes on. It was colder down here than in the rest of the house, where Draco tried to keep as many fires lit as he could manage.

He pulled a dark blue bottle out of the case, and looked at the label. Made in 1932 by the Shafiq family elves, on their estate in north-west Bordeaux. It was worth thousands, there were seven bottles, and Draco would never be able to sell it.

They brought a bottle upstairs to the empty library where Harry summoned some glasses from the kitchen, and drank it sitting in the window seat. Harry leant his head back against the dark wood panelling and closed his eyes, Draco watching the long line of his throat.

“I haven’t even eaten breakfast,” Harry said after a while, his voice slow and golden. Draco’s whole body felt warm, his blood hot, his heart beating hard.

“Do you want to go upstairs?” Draco said carefully. They didn’t need to, there wasn’t anyone here anymore to catch them, but he wanted Harry in his bed.

Harry smiled slowly, his eyes still closed, and slid off the seat to the floor, to his knees. He pushed Draco’s legs apart and put his hand on the front of Draco’s boxers. “Can I suck you off?” he asked, and Draco felt himself go red.

“Before breakfast?” Draco asked, raising his eyebrows.

“I don’t want to wait three hours for you to bake some fucking bread,” Harry replied, and slid his hand into Draco’s underwear.

It had stopped snowing by the time Harry led the way upstairs to Draco’s bedroom, up the winding staircase and down the long corridor, where they kissed for a long time on the bed. When Harry got up to shower he left a dip in the mattress where his body had been, and Draco rolled into it, and lay there, and waited.

Then Harry came back with his skin still wet and got water all over the sheets, and laughed. And Draco stayed close beside him as the pale sun moved across the sky, and across his window, and across the bed, until it was dark and the stars were out.

They ate scrambled eggs for dinner, sitting on the kitchen counter, and then read into the evening. Harry had brought him some books from Grimmauld Place.  _The Call of The Wild & White Fang._ There was never any magic in the books that Harry gave him.

Draco finished it a little past midnight. He liked staying up late. Sometimes he got nervous about going to sleep.

He’d dream about the Great Hall more often than anything else, empty of people and tables and benches, house banners on the floor. Dust would fall from the ceiling slower than in real life, heavy and thick, and when he walked his boots would leave a path behind him. The sky was red, always, glinting through the windows, but he never knew if it was dawn or dusk, a good omen or a bad one. Voldemort was never in the room, but Draco could tell he was close by, somewhere in the castle, and coming closer.

Draco hadn’t ever known why Voldemort wanted Hogwarts so badly, enough that he’d destroy it to get it, would have ripped it apart as long as he got to stand in the rubble and own it. Or maybe he hadn’t. Maybe it had just been one more thing in the way of Harry Potter. He’d have brought the castle down to get to him. He’d have brought down a city.

Draco hadn’t understood that, either, until afterwards.

“Are you staying the night?” Draco asked, when the moon was high and bright, but Harry was already asleep. Tomorrow was Sunday. Harry would help him with the washing, and he’d go with Draco into the village to buy eggs and milk. Tonight Draco would dream about castles turned to rubble. He’d dream about empty buildings. He wouldn’t wake up in one.

**Author's Note:**

> you may have already seen this [here on tumblr](http://seefin.tumblr.com/post/169936838205/draco-dreamt-sometimes-about-the-floor-of-the), and I know this is really short but I'm constantly posting things there and immediately losing track of where they went, and I wanted to keep it this time :)))) xoxo


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